


Kiss Me (Twice)

by KaSaPe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Darkness, Fluff, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Team as Family, Trapped, but it's still mostly fluff, like literally. they are trapped in a dark room for most of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 02:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11049084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaSaPe/pseuds/KaSaPe
Summary: Keith and Lance encounter unexpected complications on a mission and someone gets hurt. As if that wasn't bad enough, a trap door opens and locks them several feet underground in a dark room. With Keith out of commission and both of them unable to escape, Lance and Keith have no choice but to wait for the team to come to their rescue.For once, they talk.





	Kiss Me (Twice)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MyCloudSoulUniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyCloudSoulUniverse/gifts).



> My fill for a prompt was something along the lines of "Keith taking a hit for Lance on a mission and Lance talking to him in an attempt to distract him from the pain. It'd be cool if they could touch on the topic that Keith doesn't have a home to come back to. They confess right before help arrives and after Keith gets out of the healing pod they talk about their feelings".
> 
> ..........I tried. The order isn't quite the same and I really believe that Keith is able to withstand A LOT of pain without needing a distraction (I'm still not over the Blade of Marmora episode tbh), so it's more of Keith and Lance talking to each other. It's okay though, the prompt is still recognizable, I see it as a success :P  
>  ~~ALSO I STAYED WITHIN THE WORD COUNT SOMEONE COME HIGH FIVE ME~~

Something was wrong.

On high alert, Keith gripped his bayard tighter. He didn’t know what could possibly be wrong, there were no Galra here, but there was a bad feeling in his stomach. And he couldn’t get rid of it. It made him stick a little closer to Lance’s side than usual, his eyes flickering towards him every few seconds.

Suddenly, the intercoms in his helmet crackled to life. “Status report, you two?” Shiro’s voice sounded through.

“Nothing so far,” Keith answered. Lance yawned and kicked a stone against the wall, watching it repel.

“This mission is seriously boring. I’m starting to feel like the aliens just made the entire scroll thing up,” he complained. Keith gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to snap at him. Couldn’t Lance feel the danger? Something about this temple was just… odd. It didn’t seem peaceful. There was something… _something-_

“I’m getting a similar impression, dude. It’s been how many hours now? Three? Four?” Hunk asked. Lance groaned and kicked another stone, harder this time. Keith just focused on loosening his shoulders and observing his surroundings.

“Feels like ten!”

“Actually, it’s barely been one,” Pidge deadpanned.

“No way, you’re totally-”

They rounded another corner and all of a sudden Keith’s uneasiness spiked to the point that he could no longer ignore it. Tensing, he lifted his bayard to his chin. “ _Lance_.”

“Hm?” Lance sounded entirely unconcerned, still kicking tiny stones in front of him.

“ _Be careful_.” Lance had barely had the time to raise his eyebrows at him, eyes going from the stones towards him and back, when Shiro spoke up again.

“Is everything alright, Keith?”

“Everything’s fine. I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.” His hands were getting sweaty in the suit and the grip on his bayard bordered on uncomfortably tight. Were they approaching something? A trap? An ambush? He was laser focused on his surroundings, barely even noticing how Lance lagged behind until he completely stopped walking. A loud cough got his attention. Stopping as well, Keith turned around and gave him a questioning look.

Lance had crossed his arms in front of his chest and pulled his face into an exaggerated frown. “I’m Keith, paladin of the red lion, and I’m taking my role very seriously. Instincts are more important than common sense,” Lance mocked. Then he shifted, raising his fists and getting into a fighting stance, his lower lip jutting out as he made shifty eyes. “Lance, be careful! My otherworldly senses are telling me that evil is approaching! Nothing has happened for over an hour, but danger is near! They could be here any second!”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith gritted out.

“Cut it out, Lance.” At Shiro’s unamused voice, Lance rolled his eyes but lowered his arms again.

“What? Come on, I’m just saying the truth! Keith’s going paranoid because we’re having an easy mission for once. This building’s empty, Pidge scouted it out earlier. Isn’t that right, Pidge?”

“Yeah,” Pidge confirmed over the comms. Her voice sounded slightly winded, but Keith wasn’t concerned about that. During the last check-in she had complained about having to climb rocks to get to the higher situated caves while Hunk got to stick to the ground-level ones. “I hate to agree with Lance, but he’s actually right for once. There is no sign of life anywhere in the temple.”

Lance smirked and raised a smug eyebrow in Keith’s direction. “See? What did I tell you? Now quit being paranoid and start actually looking for the scroll, I’m not gonna do all the work here.”

“ _You_ doing all the work? You’ve been doing nothing but kicking stones for the past twenty minutes!”

“Hey, that happens to be a _very interesting pastime_ -”

“Guys,” Shiro cut in sharply. “Not the time. Keith, why would you say that you’ve got a bad feeling?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, scowling when Lance gave him an unimpressed look. “Something about this place just rubs me the wrong way. The sooner we can get out of here, the better.”

“Oh no, I knew there was something fishy about this,” Hunk said, sounding worried. “It’s just very suspicious to ask the paladins of Voltron to go cave and temple exploring, you know? We have a reputation as defenders of the universe. Like, if they really just got a scroll stolen, they could have gone looking for it on their own.”

“Seconded. Those aliens can fly while I’m stuck to almost getting my arms ripped off trying to scale walls,” Pidge grumbled.

Shiro sighed loudly. “We already talked about this. They declared the entire area surrounding the mountain as cursed land when the search unit didn’t come back.”

“Oh yeah, there was that, too,” Hunk said. “You know, maybe Keith has a point. I mean, isn’t it strange that they just straight up disappeared? And we didn’t encounter any bodies either, what if they-”

“Relax, Hunk,” Lance drawled and stretched a little. He nodded at Keith and Keith took it as his cue to start walking again, still unnaturally tense. “If we didn’t find bodies, then they have to be alive, right? Can’t be that bad.”

“No, but, like, what if they actually belonged to the rebel group? Then it would be no surprise that they didn’t come back. That'd make double the amount of enemies for us. Or what if the rebels attacked them and just hid their bodies? What if this place is _actually_ cursed?”

Keith concentrated on breathing and blocked the voices out. They were no help. If he could just find the stupid scroll, the team could leave the temple and this planet. No more anxiousness and tense muscles. He still wasn’t sure threw him off about this place but he didn’t like it one bit.

Hunk, Lance and Pidge were having an animated debate on how likely it was for the mountain to actually be cursed - something about magic not being out of the question, seeing as the lions or even just the castle couldn’t be explained with science alone - when it all went to hell. There was a scratching noise that came from stone rubbing against stone and a brief look towards their feet showed Keith that the ground beneath Lance’s feet had sunken in slightly.

He acted entirely on instinct at that point. He might not have had the most common of childhoods, but even he knew of these kind of traps in old, abandoned temples.

 _“Get down!”_ he shouted as he pushed Lance towards the ground, raising his shield to catch the lasers that inadvertently started shooting out of the wall in front of them. Their impact was heavy, making him grunt with effort as he tried to fit himself as much as possible behind the small shield. Lance was shouting something while scrambling to get his own shield up, helping to provide better cover. He pressed up against Keith’s right side when Keith heard another sound.

Charging. Something was charging. Something like a gun. And the sound wasn’t coming from the front-

Keith balked as realization hit him. He had barely enough time to yell out a warning and cover Lance’s back with his front, attempting to twist his left arm around to catch the new lasers on time when he already got hit. A pained scream tore out of him, but he didn’t budge. He couldn't. Gritting his teeth instead, he took two more hits before he got his shield securely posed in front of his side. Lance was shouting some more, but Keith couldn’t understand him. Not over the noise of the lasers and the pain setting the left side of his back aflame. 

 _Stay strong_ , Keith reminded himself. _Hold out. Breathe._ At least the adrenaline helped ignoring the pain, kind of. _Focus. These lasers won’t shoot forever._

And he was right. Sooner than expected, the fire ceased and Keith slowly lowered his shield. There were a lot of frantic voices over the intercoms, demanding an explanation about what had happened. Before Keith could even begin to open his mouth, strong hands placed themselves on his shoulders and twisted him around. He bit his lips to stop the small yelp of pain from escaping and let Lance examine his back.

“Keith! Fuck, holy fuck, dude, are you alright? Did they get you? You screamed, did-”

Lance didn’t get to finish his sentence. All of a sudden, the ground beneath them gave in, making Keith shout in surprise as he desperately grasped for the hands on his shoulders. Lance was screaming again, something that sounded a suspiciously lot like his name, and dragged him closer to his body.

There was a flurry of movement and weightlessness, then they hit the ground. Hard. Keith groaned at the pain blooming in his knees, even if it was nothing in comparison to how his back felt. Especially now that Lance was half sprawled on top of him, his belt digging uncomfortably into one of the wounds.

“Could you get _off_ me?” Keith snapped, sounding a bit harsher than intended as he tried to breathe through the pain. Lance immediately pushed himself up and scrambled back, giving Keith maybe half a second to take in his scared face before the tiles above them closed again. The low _thump_ sounded eerily final. Darkness surrounded them, making Keith that much more aware of his wounds and the noise filtering through his helmet.

“-eith? Keith, are you there?” Shiro asked in a worried tone.

“Lance?! Keith? Oh my god, guys, please tell me you are okay!”

“What happened?! Lance? Lance, did something happen to Keith?” Pidge sounded panicked, as if she was only seconds away from jumping down whatever cave she was in to personally start searching for them.

“I- I don’t know, I think he’s injured, he-”

Keith grimaced heavily and tried touching where the pain was the worst. Hot wetness greeted him alongside torn fabric and sharp pain. Cursing under his breath, he dropped his hand again. “I’m hurt,” he stated, getting everyone else to shut up for the moment. “I’m- probably gonna need a pod.”

“I’ll let Coran know right away,” Shiro said seriously at the same time as Hunk let out a worried noise.

“How bad is it? On a scale of one to ten?”

“Dunno. Seven, maybe eight,” Keith muttered. There was a soft _tap tap tap_ noise that he identified as Lance searching the ground for him. Gritting his teeth against the pain once more, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees and moved towards the noise until he bumped against what felt like a shoulder.

“Keith,” Lance whispered. His hands were roaming over the ground until they found Keith’s.

“Eight? That sounds pretty bad. Wait, are we talking about the actual wound or just the pain? Are you gonna pass out? Please don’t pass out, every time that happens I get worried you died-”

“I’ve got him, Hunk,” Lance interrupted Hunk’s frantic words. His voice sounded a lot closer than expected, but Keith couldn’t say that it was unwelcome. The pain and the darkness left him feeling miserable and Lance was a surprisingly comforting presence. Keith closed his eyes and concentrated on the reassuring feeling of Lance’s fingers around his wrists.

“Where are you guys right now? Allura says that she won’t be able to land the castle on the mountain. You have to get down from there,” Shiro piped up again. Lance let out a dry laugh.

“Tough chance of that happening, we are kind of trapped underground. It’s so dark that I can’t even see Keith and he’s, like, right in front of me.”

Keith kept quiet and focused on Lance’s presence. Not the pain. Anything but the pain. Lance. Everything was gonna be fine.

“Besides,” Lance reluctantly added when the others didn’t say anything, “I don’t think Keith would be in any state to climb walls, even if he _could_ see.”

“Fuck,” Pidge cursed. There was some noise coming over the intercoms, but Keith couldn’t identify whom it came from. It sounded like a bunch of rocks smacking against each other. “Where are you right now? I need your exact location.”

“We can’t see, Pidge,” Lance reminded her, a hint of impatience seeping into his voice. “We are somewhere in the temple, still. If you come there, I can probably describe the way we took. But we won’t be able to get out of here on our own.”

“We are coming right now,” Shiro assured them. “Pidge, get us the coordinates for the temple.”

“On it.”

Keith breathed out a quiet sigh of relief and let his head drop down. He was pretty sure that part of his helmet brushed against Lance’s shoulder, but Lance didn’t pull away. On the contrary, one of his hands wandered Keith’s arm up all the way to his neck, pressing his face properly against his him.

It wasn’t all that comfortable, but it was still nice. Warm. Reassuring. Lance smelled like sweat and shampoo, a combination that really shouldn’t have been as appealing as it was. He should probably take his helmet off, that would make the experience a lot better.

“Alright,” Shiro spoke up again. “It’s gonna take us close to an hour to get to where you are. Less if we can take the lions. What happened in there?”

Lance hesitated. Pinching his eyebrows, Keith answered in his stead. “We- activated some kind of trap. One of the tiles on the ground gave in and lasers started shooting at us. They were delayed and came from two directions, I-” he paused to breathe in sharply. “-wasn’t quick enough. After that, the ground gave in and trapped us in a room beneath it. It's closed again now.”

“Okay. Alright. We can deal with that. Right, guys? No evil people, just an evil building. Be careful of suspicious tiles. Got it,” Hunk said nervously. “Are there any dead bodies with you?”

“None,” Lance said, tightening his grip around Keith’s wrist. “At least none we’ve seen before the doors closed.”

“And no scroll either?” Pidge asked. She sounded miffed and Keith couldn’t blame her. Fuck those rebels and this mission. All this pain for a stupid piece of paper-

“No.”

“So we can’t take the lions. If the scroll is in the building, we might damage it,” Pidge concluded. Keith bit his lip at the implications but agreed. He wouldn’t die from his wounds. Probably. They couldn’t jeopardize the mission because of him.

“Just take the lion to the temple and then advance on foot,” Lance said in a clipped tone. “Hurry. And bring something to pull Keith up with, I really don’t think he’ll be able to climb.”

“It’s not that bad.” Keith frowned, but made no attempt to take his request back. The team must have picked up on it, because Shiro’s next orders came with the kind of urgency he usually only reserved for emergencies.

“Alright. Pidge, get down here. Hunk, keep searching for the scroll until Pidge arrives, then head in the direction of the forest. I will instruct Allura to land over there. I’ll also go ahead and find something to help Keith out of the room and then pick you up in Black on the way. Pidge, keep me updated on your current coordinates.”

“Roger that.”

“Lance-” Shiro hesitated. There was a tense moment of silence before he continued his sentence. “Make sure that Keith is okay. I’ll be checking in every ten minutes, just to be sure.”

“Understood,” Lance answered, weirdly serious for once. Keith felt bad for worrying them all and just quietly agreed when Shiro told him to hang in there.

After that, silence washed over them. Pidge had cut their communications off, apparently it was difficult to keep an open team channel through the helmets. They would have to make do with Shiro’s occasional check-ins.

Not that he minded all that much. One worried team member was more than enough already.

“Hey, you alright?” Lance asked.

“Could be better,” he answered honestly. Then Lance was shifting, pushing against his shoulders and making him lean away. Keith sat back onto his legs, trying not to wince too much when the movement pulled at his injuries. Next he reached for his helmet and took it off, placing it on the ground by his knees so that he wouldn’t miss any of Shiro’s messages. The pain in his back was almost liquid fire now, he felt too hot in his armor.

A hollow clink told him that Lance had followed his example and took his helmet off. There was a brief moment of silence, then Lance sighed. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” Keith confessed. “Now we wait, I guess.”

“Yeah.” There was more shuffling. Keith wasn’t surprised when Lance’s hand bumped against his knee, he just reached out with his own to tap against his arm. Surprisingly enough, Lance immediately latched onto it.

It was his left hand. The one that was still slightly slick with blood.

“What-” Lance began, but then cut himself off with a sharp inhale. “Blood?!” he squeaked. Keith managed a wry smile, even if no one was there to appreciate it.

“Yeah.”

“From your back?”

“Yeah.” From where else could it be? They hadn’t fallen deep enough to hurt his hands to this extent.

“How bad are your injuries really?” Lance asked haltingly. Keith’s heart squeezed painfully when he noted the suppressed worry in his voice. Lance was difficult to understand sometimes, but he knew him well enough by now to recognize badly disguised feelings. And this right here, with a breathy voice and trembling fingers, was _very badly_ disguised concern.

“I wasn’t lying earlier. Seven or eight.” Keith shifted his hand to grip Lance’s forearm reassuringly and winced when the slight tensing of his muscles made the pain flare up. “I’m more inclined towards eight.”

Lance gave a humorless laugh as if Keith had made a bad joke. It hadn’t been supposed to be a joke but he refrained from pointing that out. Lance sounded so helpless that his heart hurt even more than before. He wished there was something he could to to alleviate his worries, but he knew that downplaying an injury was just a plain stupid thing to do.

“Can’t handle the pain?”

“I’m handling it just fine,” Keith bit out. Mostly, that was. He still felt as if his armor was going to start burning any second now with how much the wounds on his back hurt. What he wouldn’t give for one of Lance’s ice blasts.

“Uh-huh,” Lance said, sounding entirely unconvinced. The hands on his arm wandered up until they found his shoulders, then they dragged him towards Lance a little. Keith couldn’t stop the small yelp of pain from escaping but Lance didn’t comment on it. Instead, he shifted closer and began trailing his hands down Keith’s back. Slowly, softly. Keith was breathing shallowly as he clenched his fists and waited for the inevitable.

When Lance neared the uppermost wound, he couldn’t help but flinch a little. Almost immediately Lance froze, hands barely putting any pressure onto him. He was checking how bad the damage really was, Keith reminded himself. That’s important. He couldn't push him away, no matter how much it hurt. So he forced himself to breathe in deeply and turn his head slightly towards where he expected Lance’s head to be.

“I’m fine. Three wounds on the left side.”

Keith got a feeling that Lance had just nodded, but couldn’t be sure. The darkness was still almost all-encompassing. How long would it take his eyes to get used to it?

Lance’s hands wandered closer to where the pain came from and Keith forced himself to _keep breathing_. He just had to endure it for a moment. Lance wasn’t one to expose him to more pain than necessary, he knew that. He would just have to-

One of Lance’s hands passed over the first wound and Keith bit his lip. White hot pain shot up his back, making him unwillingly flinch forward a little. His head came in contact with something that felt like the collar of Lance’s armor - it was cooler than the air around them. Keith tensed his muscles and rested his forehead against it, willing himself not to move until Lance was finished with his assessment.

Finally, after what felt like ages, Lance let his hands drop down. He didn’t make any move to push Keith away from his chest and he was kind of grateful for it. As careful as Lance had been, Keith’s back already hurt enough without making him move again.

“So?” he prompted when Lance didn’t say anything for an unusual amount of time.

“There’s… a lot of blood. Lasers are hot, aren’t they? Aren’t they supposed to cauterize the wound the moment they make it?”

“We’re in space. Weirder things have happened,” Keith replied evenly. Lance sighed and moved his arms from where they had almost been in an embrace around Keith.

“Guess so. You’re bleeding quite a lot though, let’s hope the others will get here fast.”

Keith just hummed noncommittally. The wound couldn’t be _that_ bad if Red hadn’t burnt the temple down yet. Besides, it was kind of nice to be close to a serious Lance for once. Keith wished he was like that more often.

“You wanna lay down?”

“That’s going to hurt,” Keith sighed. Lance made a strange sound and flicked against his head.

“Not on your back! I mean on your side or something.”

“That’s going to hurt my neck. The collar-”

“You can put your head in my lap.”

Keith froze. He could feel Lance stiffening beneath him and unconsciously curled his hands into fists. What was Lance saying? That wasn’t - okay, yes, they had been getting along better recently, but they hadn’t really gotten to the point where that wasn’t a weird suggestion. Or had they? Suddenly, Keith wasn't sure anymore. His heart started to beat faster and he thanked the universe for the lack of light in the room. His face was bound to be unnaturally red.

“Um, I was just- look, you really need to lay down and I don’t think lying on your stomach is gonna be comfortable- I’m just- being nice. Yeah. I’m just showing my compassion-”

“Alright,” Keith interrupted him. Like hell he was gonna let this opportunity pass. “I just- well. I’m not sure where your legs are.”

“I’m gonna help you!” Lance immediately exclaimed. His arms came around Keith’s shoulders again and he allowed him to turn him to the left before insistently pushing down his right shoulder. All the moving hurt, quite a lot actually, but Keith kept quiet about it. Lance probably knew it anyway, he couldn’t quite disguise how his breathing turned uneven and choppy again.

Once he was finally settled down, Lance’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. Keith appreciated it, he felt like the pain was slowly making him go insane. There was nothing to distract him from it-

“So, how long d’you think it’s gonna take them to get here?”

“Probably around an hour,” he answered, repeating Shiro’s earlier words. One of Lance’s fingers began to tap rhythmically against his shoulder.

“Shiro said he’s gonna take Black.”

“Half an hour, then. We are twenty minutes into the temple.” Lance’s finger stopped tapping and Keith pouted a little.

“We have been in here for _an hour_.”

“But we were looking for the scroll,” Keith reminded him. Lance gave a pensive sound and the tapping started up again. It was calming; Keith found himself counting along with it, one to ten, rinse, repeat.

“Guess so. Half an hour doesn’t sound so bad, could have been worse.”

Keith grimaced but didn’t protest. “Yeah,” he said quietly. Half an hour still sounded pretty bad to him. He wondered when he would grow tired of counting Lance’s taps.

For a while there was silence, then a crackling sound informed them that the intercoms had turned on. It seemed to have taken Lance by surprise, he jumped a little and jostled Keith’s head. Keith made a small noise of protest and Lance’s hand immediately came down on his head in an apologetic motion.

“Lance? Keith?”

“Shiro, hi!” Lance squeaked, patting the floor with his other hand until a loud smack and a suppressed curse told Keith that he had found his helmet. Raising an eyebrow, Keith let a fond smile stretch over his face. What an idiot. “What’s up?”

“I just arrived at the castle. Coran says we have some kind of hover-scooter that we can use to help Keith out of there as long as he can sit.”

Keith felt Lance’s hand curl into his hair a little and knew what Lance was going to ask before he even finished his question. “Can you-”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said evenly. Shiro seemed relieved to hear that and once again reminded them that help was on the way now. Then he disappeared again.

Slowly, Lance’s hand began a stroking pattern over his hair. It seemed almost unconscious and Keith was afraid to call attention to it, he didn’t want him to stop. It felt nice. Better than the tapping from earlier, even.

“You sure it’s gonna be okay? There was a lot of blood.”

“It will be fine,” Keith said. He almost felt like a broken record, repeating the same words every five minutes. “Just hurts some.”

Some. A _lot_. Almost the same thing.

Lance’s fingers curled guiltily into his hair, before he began stroking it again. Honestly, it was nice, but Keith was beginning to feel sleepy and he had promised Hunk not to pass out. Out of all the times to stay quiet, why did Lance choose to do it now?

“You alright?” Keith asked. Lance made a noise of confusion and began a new hand movement, drawing circles into his scalp.

“ _Me?!_ I’m not the one that got shot by strange alien lasers!”

“You’re being quiet,” Keith offered as an explanation. Lance stiffened a little but kept moving his hand. It almost seemed like he wanted to buy time. Keith was just about to say something else, when Lance finally spoke up again.

“Yeah, I guess I just… feel bad.”

“Why?” Keith wanted to know. “Because I’m hurt?”

“Yeah. You’re hurt because of me,” Lance said.

He. What?

Keith frowned, suddenly wishing he was able to see Lance’s face. His eyes were slowly getting used to the darkness but not enough that he would have been able to make out facial expressions. He stayed turned away instead, mind racing as he tried to understand how Lance had come to that conclusion.

He came up empty.

“Why would you think that?” he asked finally. Lance sighed and began smoothing Keith’s hair down again.

“If I had covered your back, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“The lasers were delayed, you couldn’t have known about it.” What was Lance even saying? He made no sense sometimes.

“Yeah, but, like… I don’t know. I feel like if I had done something different, you wouldn’t be injured now. Every time something like this happens I find myself asking what would happen if one day we aren’t quite so quick to react.”

The silence between them was thick. Keith was aware of the dangers of their job - how could he not? He knew that they had an entire universe to protect. They were fighting a war. The chances that all of them would come out of this unscathed were slim to none.

And yet. And yet he knew that thinking about it wouldn’t change a thing. They were the only people that stood between Zarkon and the rest of the universe. That included Earth. They couldn’t just give up their jobs because of some danger.

“Stop worrying about that,” Keith said. Lance sighed and slowed his hand movements a little, obviously not listening to him.

“But seriously, what if it happened? What would have happened if you hadn’t been fast enough just now? What would I have told your family back on Earth?”

Keith froze. He knew about Lance’s attachment to Earth, everyone knew about it. The team didn’t usually talk about it but it was kind of an open secret - everyone missed Earth. Hunk had a family he wanted to go back to. Pidge was still searching for hers, but Keith had no doubt that once she had them back she would want them to be safe back home.

And then there were Shiro and him. For him, there had never been anyone but Shiro. He didn’t miss Earth as much as he missed its familiar atmosphere and food.

“Imagine that,” Lance rambled on. “I’d have to have been the one to look your mother in the eye and say ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am, your son didn’t make it. He died protecting me’. That’s, like, the worst thing I can imagine.” Lance’s voice cracked. Keith instinctively reached up to grab his hand, stilling the calming motion and hissing when the movement pulled at the wounds again.

“Um. Keith?”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Keith stated clearly.

“You can’t know that! Our jobs are dangerous, man, every mission we go on could be our last one!”

“For someone who thinks like that, you sure were complaining a lot about boredom earlier,” Keith mumbled. Lance didn’t seem to pick up on it.

“It’s driving me insane. I know that we have people to protect and I would never abandon them. But… don’t you think we’re sort of abandoning the people back home when we do that? They have no idea where we went. We might all die out here and they will never know. We just left them.”

Lance wrenched his hand out of Keith’s grasp and put it on the ground. Keith mourned its loss, but didn’t deem it important enough to actually ask Lance to put it back on his head. Instead, he tapped against Lance’s leg to get his attention.

“Stop thinking about that, you can’t change anything about it.”

“I _know_ , but- it’s hard, you know? When stuff like this happens I just can’t help it. They are our families, Keith.”

Keith sighed softly and patted his knee again. He wished he was better at comforting people. “If it helps, I’m not gonna let you die.”

Lance laughed humorlessly and brought his hand back up into Keith’s hair. And if Keith smiled and closed his eyes at the touch, no one was there to see it.

“I noticed that. Heroic as always.” There was a beat of silence where Keith refused to take the bait. He enjoyed an almost normal conversation with Lance more than he should. Then Lance spoke up again, voice uncharacteristically quiet as he brushed the hair away from Keith’s ear. “But what if you die?”

Keith opened his eyes again and tapped his finger against Lance’s knee, almost mimicking his earlier gesture. “That won’t happen. And if even it will, you won’t have to worry about telling my mother.”

“Why? You gonna send Shiro instead?”

For a moment, Keith tried to figure out if Lance was being serious. He had already talked about Keith’s mother before, seemingly having forgotten who he was talking to. Lance _knew_ that he didn’t have a family, right?

“She doesn’t exist,” Keith stated bluntly. If the way Lance was freezing up was any indication, he hadn’t known.

“What do you mean, she doesn’t exist?!” he squeaked loudly and ripped his hand away. Keith winced at the sudden increase in volume.

“I don’t have a family, Lance. Why do you think I lived in that shack in the desert?”

“I don’t know! I thought you were just camping out there! Like in a secret hideout or something!”

“That ‘secret hideout’ was my home,” Keith replied. He wasn’t sure whether he should feel offended or amused, so he settled on a weird mix that made him raise one eyebrow and give the floor an unimpressed look.

There was a shocked silence from Lance before his slowly hand crept up to Keith’s hair again. “That… sucks, buddy. _Majorly_.”

Keith hummed. He could imagine worse things. Sure, growing up without a family hadn’t always been easy, but he was quite happy with how his life had turned out. After all, it had brought him here right into Lance’s lap.

...maybe that was the reason Red hadn’t come to his rescue yet. She felt how comfortable he was, despite the pain. He sent a silent thanks to his lion and resolved to take her for a ride around the castle as soon as he could.

“It’s okay though,” Lance kept talking. “You’ve got us now. And we annoy the hell out of you, just like a real family would.”

The thought brought a huge smile to Keith’s face. Family. He couldn’t deny that it felt nice to have one. It warmed his heart to an almost unreal extent and he turned his head a little to hide his smile. Not that it was necessary, the darkness had probably hidden it anyway.

“No, for real,” Lance said. There was a cheeky grin in his voice that Keith couldn’t help but notice. “We are kind of a family. Just think about it. Shiro is your big bro, Pidge is your little sis. Then you’ve got Coran who is kind of our father, right? Or uncle. He reminds me of _my_ uncle, but it’s up to you.”

“Uncle sounds good,” Keith replied, unwillingly amused.

“Alright! Okay, so, Coran is your uncle. And then you got Hunk, who can be your cousin? No, scratch that, he’s your dad. He’s always worrying about all of us and gives us hugs when he’s proud. Then that leaves Allura. She can be the cousin. The sporty cousin with the endless trophies that you wonder how you can possibly be related to.”

Keith laughed, sharp and abruptly. It made the pain flare up so he stopped again, but the smile stayed even through his grimace. “What about you, then?”

“Me? Psh, I don’t wanna to be related to you, mullet.” He playfully tugged at Keith’s hair, even as Keith’s stomach dropped. It was a joke, he knew that. It still hurt, weirdly enough.

Shiro was his saving grace. Before Lance could question his silence, his voice sounded through their helmets. “Keith, Lance. How are you holding up?”

“Still good, mostly,” Lance replied. “How long until you can get here?”

“We’re at the temple. Pidge has locked on to your location, we should be there in around fifteen minutes.”

“Awesome,” Lance breathed out. His hands were stroking Keith’s hair again, something that left him with mixed emotions now. He wanted to enjoy it, he really did, but he felt… guilty for that, almost. He and Lance weren’t always getting along great and as much as Lance had been joking just now, it was still a reminder of exactly that. “We went pretty much just straight ahead, be careful when you see blood on the floor.”

“Blood?”

“Lance,” Keith said sharply. Lance huffed.

“What? Let’s be real here, that’s a really good description. Better than ‘look at the wall carvings’.” Keith had to admit that that was true. Sighing, he let Lance continue the conversation. “Yeah, so, watch out for the blood because that’s where the lasers started shooting.”

“Okay, got it. We will contact you again when we’re drawing closer.”

“M’kay. We’ll be waiting.”

Not that they could be doing much else. Or at least Keith couldn’t. Lance could probably try getting out of here somehow.

He didn’t make any attempt to move though. Instead, he kept carding his fingers through Keith’s hair in a soothing motion. “Alright, what’s up now?”

“Huh?” Keith asked, kind of confused. What did he mean?

“Why have you suddenly gotten all moody again? What did I say?”

Oh. “Nah, it’s… nothing, really.” Keith grimaced, one of these days he really had to work on his lying voice. “I just thought we were getting along.”

“We are?” Now it was Lance’s turn to sound confused. “What gave you the impression that we didn’t? Was it because I called you ‘mullet’?”

If it had been any other moment, Keith would have given him a flat look. Unfortunately he was stuck with scowling at darkness instead. “No. Just forget it. It’s not important.”

“Oh, come on! You worry about us not getting along but then you won't tell me what’s bothering you?”

That was unexpectedly sound logic. Maybe Keith had to actually put some effort into explaining his thoughts. Lance probably wouldn’t make fun of him now, not after he had confessed earlier how scared he was of dying. Right? Lance was hard to understand sometimes.

“I like it when you do that,” he said instead. “Don’t stop.”

“What?” Lance asked confusedly, still massaging his scalp.

“That,” Keith said, reaching for his hand. Lance froze immediately. So much for ‘don’t stop’.

“You- _huh?!”_

“I like it when you do that,” Keith repeated. “It feels nice. And it kind of distracts from the pain.”

“Oh. Oh, uh, alright.” Lance’s voice was still weirdly high-pitched, but he resumed his hand movements. It didn’t help him with relaxing this time, they were surrounded by an awkward atmosphere.

This. This was exactly why he didn’t talk about his feelings. But he had told himself that he would put some effort into it, so he wouldn’t back down now.

“When you said that you wouldn’t want to be related to me I just remembered that this is actually a weird thing to do for people like us. That’s all.”

“ _Oh_ , uh. You- um.”

Keith resisted the urge to roll his eyes and looked down instead. His hand was splayed on the ground before him, he could almost make out a vague outline. Took his eyes long enough.

Seconds passed.

Lance didn’t remind him that he had just been joking.

It _hurt_.

He wasn’t surprised though. That’s just how they were. Teammates. Friends. Good friends, maybe, possibly. Nothing more than that. Neither family nor… whatever the hell Keith’s heart wanted.

The silence between them stretched. Keith unconsciously drew his shoulders up a little and winced when the pain rolled over him once more. He really should have known by now that any kind of movement would result in agony.

Suddenly, Lance spoke up again. “If you want me to be your family… I guess I could be.”

Silence. There was an unspoken ‘but’ in the air that Keith didn’t like one bit. He wanted to keep quiet and give Lance the time he needed before continuing his statement but he had never been the most patient person there was.

Still, he could read the atmosphere well enough to know that they were teetering on the edge of something new. Something had shifted between them, something was changing, something had been changing ever since Keith had explained his thoughts. Maybe before that even, maybe things had already started to shift when Lance had examined his wounds. Keith couldn’t tell. But he could tell that whatever change was currently happening was nearing its completion.

“But?” he prompted softly. The movement of Lance’s fingers slowed down again and grew softer than before, almost tender.

“But my feelings for you aren’t exactly… familial,” he whispered.

Under any other circumstances, Keith might have frowned and asked what he meant. But Lance’s hand was still softly stroking his hair, still so much more careful than Keith was used to that it was all painfully obvious. His breath caught and his heart sped up, mind reeling as he tried to come up with a response.

The intercoms crackled to life. “Keith? Lance?”

Lance startled and ripped his hand away from Keith’s head as if Shiro could see him through the helmet’s visor. “Here!” he squeaked. If Keith hadn’t been as busy with really wrapping his head around Lance’s _confession_ , he might have given him a flat look. It was so obvious that Lance was trying to hide something that even Shiro picked up on it.

“Is everything okay with you guys?”

“Yeah, just fine, we’re all good!”

Lance’s hand, Keith noted, hadn’t returned to his hair again. His voice also sounded further away, as if he was leaning back or something.

“Keith?”

“We’re fine, Shiro,” Keith sighed. “You just startled him.”

“M-me?! Hah, no way, I was just improving my acting skills. Didn’t that sound like Pidge? I think I almost nailed it.”

Keith cringed and asked himself what he saw in this boy.

“You are lucky that Pidge didn’t make this into an open channel,” Shiro said after a few moments. A faint ‘what did Lance do now?’ could be heard from somewhere in the background, but it went ignored. “Never mind that. We found the general area, we should be pretty close. There's blood right ahead of us. Lance, can you give us a signal?”

“And how should I do that?” Lance asked, obviously still thrown off his game. Keith suppressed a sigh and pointed to the ceiling, even if Lance wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Just shoot through the stone.”

“But what if the stone is too thick?!”

“Then the others will at least be able to hear some noise. Come on, now, or do _I_ have to do it?”

Lance huffed but soon after there was the flash of his bayard transforming, the way Lance shifted his body telling him that he aimed upwards and away from them. Then there was the familiar sound of Lance’s gun going off, followed by blue lasers illuminating the room. Keith was pretty sure that the gun didn’t manage to pierce the stone, but lots of muffled yelling told him that the others were here.

Finally.

Abrupt relief flooded his body as the realization really sunk in. They were here. Soon they could get him into a healing pod and constant pain would cease. The wounds hurt way more than what Keith was used to from other battles.

There was a loud bang and suddenly part of the ceiling broke down. Keith instinctively ripped his arm up and activated his shield, protecting his side against falling debris. Lance was hunching over Keith’s head, his own shield activated as he yelled at the team to be careful.

“Lance? Keith?” Pidge’s voice drifted towards them.

“We’re here! Come on, hurry! And Hunk, be _careful_ with that!”

“Sorry, Lance!” Hunk called sheepishly. “I tried to aim where you shot the stone but you know that it’s hard sometimes.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he grumbled irritably. Keith could relate. He was on _fire_. “Just hurry up and come down here already.”

 

* * *

 

It had taken the team a while to get the scooter down and back up again. And as much as not having to walk had helped, Keith had still felt that the pain was growing worse every minute. By the time they had reached Black, he hadn’t been able to hold his grimace back anymore. By the time they had reached the castle, Keith actually felt dizzy. _Lance definitely had a point_ , he had thought. _These lasers were weird._

“Come on, Keith, almost there,” Lance whispered urgently as he helped Shiro put the white suit onto him. Keith bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut, gripping Lance’s shoulders for dear life as Shiro zipped it shut.

“Now in there you go,” Shiro said. Keith opened his eyes just in time to see him nodding towards the healing pod and made a noise of agreement. Lance immediately shifted his stance, hurrying over to his right side and wrapping an arm around his upper back. The support was appreciated, Keith wasn’t sure if he would have been able to reach the pod on his own.

Coran waited next to it, face serious as he motioned for them to go ahead. Lance was just about to push Keith in, when a memory abruptly crashed into Keith’s disoriented thoughts.

_But my feelings for you aren’t exactly familial._

“Wait,” Keith grunted. He gripped the pod’s wall and forced Lance to stop moving, lest he would hurt him more.

“What’s wrong?” Lance asked, clearly concerned. Keith forced himself to take a few steps back so that he could face Lance properly while still holding onto the pod. He was looking at him with wide eyes, his brows creased in worry.

He was _adorable_. What the fuck. Keith’s heart couldn’t take it.

Reaching out with his right arm, he dragged Lance closer and pressed a kiss onto his lips. Lance absolutely froze in his grip, not even coming back to himself when Keith let go again and patted his shoulder. “We’ll talk later.”

The last thing he saw before the cryopod activated was Lance’s shocked face transforming into a giddy smile.

 

* * *

 

Keith felt like he had been run over by a truck. Damn, healing pods sure didn’t leave you refreshed after they finished their work.

He had barely enough time to blink his eyes open and see the entire team waiting for him before the pod ejected him already. He stumbled out, unsteady on his feet until Shiro reached out to support him. Blinking slowly, he took in everyone’s grins.

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty!” Lance called, making the rest of the team laugh. Keith just blinked some more, unsure whether that was supposed to be an insult or a compliment.

“For real though, you were in there for almost 24 hours. We actually found the scroll in the meantime, together with three of the rebels. You also slept through the parting ceremony,” Pidge said.

“That and dinner,” Hunk chimed in. “They had some neat space tacos.”

“Yeah, I would have saved you one, but we weren’t allowed to bring food back with us,” Lance beamed. He hadn’t once looked away from Keith ever since he had exited the pod and it… was honestly kind of weird. Creepy, almost. Why was Lance so happy to see him?

All the memories came rushing back at once. Keith’s eyes grew wide as he put one and one together and all of a sudden he wanted nothing more but get out of this ugly suit and talk to Lance. Because as stupid as his decision to kiss him out of nowhere had been, Lance didn’t seem to be too put off by it.

Quite the contrary. Lance seemed happy. Which _really_ made Keith want to talk to him, they had to clear things up.

If Lance was so happy about that kiss, did that mean they could do it more often?

His stomach fluttered a little as he pushed Shiro away and rose to his full height. “I’m gonna go change.”

Allura nodded in support and clasped her hands in front of her body. “That’s a good idea. We will fill you in on all you have missed over dinner.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure that I can recreate some of the-”

“No!” Hunk interrupted Coran, eyes wide. “I’ve been feeling rather stressed lately, you know, because of the whole Keith thing and all, and you know that cooking relaxes me so just let me handle it.” After a slight moment of hesitation, Coran nodded. Keith felt a wave of gratitude washing over him. He was starving but even so he wasn’t sure if he would be able to stomach Coran’s… _creations_. He refused to call it cooking.

“Cool. Be back soon,” Keith said, flashing everyone a smile before turning to leave the hall. He walked quickly, the last bit of confusion lifting from his thoughts. Exercise had always done that to him and even if this didn’t really count as exercise, it still helped a lot compared to simply standing around.

Changing was just as much of a quick affair as walking had been. He didn’t even take a minute to shed the healing suit and get into his normal clothes, grabbing his jacket to put it on on the way. For now he had to find Lance.

He didn’t have to search for long. In fact, he didn’t have to search at all. Lance had been leaning on the wall next to his door, pushing himself up with an eager grin when his eyes fell onto Keith. Keith couldn’t help the answering smile appearing on his own face.

“So,” Lance drawled. “How are you feeling after sleeping for a whole day?”

Keith relished in being able to give Lance a flat look that he could actually see. “That’s what you choose to talk about?”

One of Lance’s eyebrows raised and his grin transformed into a smirk. “Why, was there something _you_ wanted to talk about?”

For a few moments Keith just stood there in silence, leaving Lance hanging. Then he wordlessly shrugged his jacket on and turned towards the dining hall. Almost immediately Lance scrambled to catch up to him, casually leaning his arm onto Keith’s shoulder. Keith couldn’t help the small upturn of his lips, although he made no move to acknowledge it.

“So? Is there?”

“Nah,” Keith said lightly. It threw Lance off a little and before he knew it, they had reached the dining hall already. Voices were filtering through the door, laughing together. The team. His family.

And then there was Lance. Out here, with him. He could have waited with the others for Keith to appear, it wasn’t like he would have taken particularly long to get there. But he hadn’t. Instead he had followed him all the way to his room, waiting in silence for him to come back out.

With his heart feeling too full for his chest, Keith turned around and raised an eyebrow at Lance. Lance seemed conflicted on whether he should speak up or not, leaving him stuck with a half-frown and flitting eyes. Keith decided to save him the trouble of making a decision.

It was almost a repetition from before the healing pod. Keith reached out and dragged Lance towards him, pressing his mouth against soft lips. Once again Lance seemed to freeze, but before Keith could pull away this time arms came around his torso and dragged him closer.

Warm. Lance was so _warm_. It was a stark difference from the chilling cool of the pod that still seemed to linger in his bones. Keith pressed a little closer, enjoying the firm muscles surrounding him from all sides.

When Lance tugged at his hair a little, Keith pulled away. He was met with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, a smile so wide on Lance’s face that he looked younger than he actually was. Lance was staring at him in pure wonder and Keith swore to himself that he would do everything in his power and more to make sure that he would never get hurt. He would take a thousand strange laser shots if it meant that Lance kept smiling like that.

“Well, well, that makes the second time you kissed me,” Lance said teasingly. Keith gave him a flat look.

“Not like I have much of a choice on that if you won’t make a move.”

Lance bristled and puffed his chest out a little. “Uh, I think the pod messed with your head a little bit. Who was the one that confessed first?”

“Technically I haven’t confessed yet at all,” Keith pointed out. He immediately regretted it when Lance’s eyes lit up in mischief while nodding with a mock-serious expression.

“Yeah, that’s- yeah, that’s good point actually, I think we should remedy that as soon as possible.”

What a nerd. Keith raised an eyebrow and tried to keep his small smile from turning into a full-blown grin. “What makes you think that there is anything to confess at all?”

“Hm, I dunno,” Lance said, smirk reappearing. “Maybe the fact that I’m absolutely irresistible. Or the fact that you’re still holding onto my jacket. Or maybe the fact that you kissed me. Twice.”

“That doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s possible that I just happen to enjoy your looks but wouldn’t want anything to do with you otherwise.”

“Oh please, you almost _died_ trying to protect me from magic-y alien lasers.”

“I could have done that to save myself and just used you as a shield for the lasers from the other side,” Keith teased. Finally, Lance’s smirk fell and he narrowed his eyes at him.

“Are you denying that you have a crush on me?!”

“Hm… maybe I have a little one,” Keith conceded. It was enough to make the grin on Lance’s face come back full force, lighting his entire face up. He radiated so much unfiltered happiness that Keith couldn’t hold his own smile back anymore.

“Alright, fine. You wanna be my boyfriend until you are sure about that?”

Keith pretended to think for a while, then he shrugged. The movement was kind of awkward with them still being pressed so close together, but he didn’t particularly care about that. Not right now. Not now that he had a _boyfriend_. Lance. Lance was his boyfriend. Lance _liked_ him.

His stomach fluttered as he tried to give a nonchalant response. “Why not? It’s not like I have much else to do.”

Lance beamed and pressed a kiss to his cheek, leaving him a little flustered but still able to hide it. Then he grabbed Keith’s hand and pulled him towards the dining hall.

“Cool, cool. You made the right choice, my dude. Being my boyfriend comes with advantages like top secret information about strange alien lasers and free cuddles whenever you want.”

“Doesn’t sound like too much of a bad deal,” Keith agreed. Lance grinned and waggled his eyebrows at him.

“Right? I’ll make sure you won’t regret it. So, first things first - some top secret information for you. The temple _was_ actually cursed, that wasn’t just some stuff that delusional aliens made up. You wouldn’t believe what kind of shit we went through to get past all the other traps-”

Keith listened and smiled, allowing his boyfriend to lead him into the dining hall towards the grinning faces of his family.

 

**Author's Note:**

> There is now a [russian translation](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5600119) of this fic by [ma7su](https://ma7su.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!! 
> 
> Thanks for reading! :D As usual, you can find me on [tumblr](http://keiths-stupid-mullet.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/ka_sape).


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